Tablet PC (TC1100) sleep problem

Recently I came across a person on the Tablet PC Forum having a problem with their HP Tablet PC (TC1100) running Windows 7 not coming out of sleep mode. The problem was after a period of inactivity or manually putting sleep mode the Tablet wouldn’t come back online.

l have seen other people report this problem as well.  l made several suggestions and had him confirmed was using the correct video driver and the post video fix and he was. At this point didn’t know what else to try.

Well I just got a message from that person that he was able to resolve the sleep by upgrading the hard drive from a 4200 rpm to a 5400 rpm drive. These tablets originally came with 40gb 4200 rpm drives. I personally have several of these Tablets and have not ran into this issue on any of them, but I have 5400 rpm drives on them so this might be why mine work.  In any case I will have to keep that in my bag of tricks in case I see this being reported by others.

My favorite things for Tablet PC (OneNote)

My favorite things

This is second in a series of “My favorite things for Tablet PC”. In the last post I talked about Grahl Software Design PDF Annotator, which allows you to mark up PDF Documents and make notes using ink and/or a multitude of other editing tools.  You can read that post here.

In this post I am going to look at Microsoft OneNote 2010.  This is an office component that is in all editions of Office 2010, please note that this is not the case in Office 2007.

I am a huge fan of Microsoft OneNote 2010.  This is one of those applications that once you start using it, you will be hooked.  I started using OneNote by accident on a Tablet PC at work and since then I have been hooked.  I have been overly impressed on the improvements in the product from 2003 to 2007, and now in 2010.

What is OneNote?

What is OneNote? 

OneNote organizes your notes in Notebooks, each of which are broken into Sections with multiples pages. Notebooks are located on the left side, with sections on the top as tabs, and pages listed on the right side. Think of it like a school notebook like a your old high school Trapper Keeper. You have multiple classes that you keep in folders (sections), and multiple notes in each folder (pages).

You can have multiple Notebooks like one for school or a notebook for a project.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some of my favorite features:

1. Great inking and ink tools (with ability to convert ink to text).  My primary use for it is the inking with my Tablet PC, but I use it on my laptop at work and at home.
2. Ability to print to OneNote (adds a virtual printer that allows you to print to and import into OneNote.
3. Tightly integrated with other Office applications.  You can send other Office apps to OneNote.  For instance in Outlook you can send an email to OneNote and
4. Create audio notes (Can search for key words spoken through OneNote special indexing)
5. Great advanced searching tool (includes powerful OCR technology with ability to search images). Ability to tag notes for even easier searching.
6. Send a web page to OneNote (right click on a page and send to OneNote or click on the icon located on the upper right corner of web page).
7. Ability to attach files into OneNote pages (not links but actually imbed the file into the OneNote page)
8. Share Notebooks to a network location where multiple people can edit at the same time. Changes are merged automatically.
9. There is no save button. This was weird at first but now you don’t even think about it. You make any changes they are instantly saved.

Download your copy of it here and give a spin.  Let me know what you think and how you are using it?

Related Posts:

Tablet PC (TC1100) as an e-reader (problems with Wacom) here.

Tablet PC (TC1100) sleep problems here.

Installing Windows 7 on HP Tablet TC1100 here.

My favorite things for the Tablet PC (PDF Annotator)

I have an older HP Tablet PC (TC1100) and over the years I have come across some great Tablet applications.  Over the next couple of weeks I am going to share some of my favorite ones.  In this series of my favorite things for the Tablet PC I am starting with PDF Annotator by Grahl Software Design.

PDF Annotator lets you open PDF files and mark them up with notes, pictures, etc. This especially rocks on a Tablet PC with inking capabilities.  However it is not just for Tablets, it does work well with desktops.

My top 5 list of what I like about PDF Annotator

1. Mark up PDF file and send to another user who can open with Adobe Reader and see your markups.

2. Installs a PDF Annotator Virtual Printer that allows you to print any file and makes the document open in PDF Annotator as a PDF file.

3. Can remove all annotations in a single client to restore to the original document.

4. Multitude of editing tools.

5. Can create blank PDF files or add blank pages into existing documents.

Below is a page from the read me document that I have marked up.

The price for a single license is $69.95 along with a $29.95 mtce/upgrade fee that includes technical support.  The file download is just over 20 MB and they are pretty good with several updates a year.  They are currently on version 3.0.0.324, go download a 30 day trial version today and tell me what you think.

Next up Microsoft OneNote 2010.

Tablet PC (TC1100) as an e-reader (problems with Wacom)

With Christmas right around the corner it seems that e-readers are the popular gift and it seems that everyone has one, Borders (Kobo), Amazon’s (Kindle), Barnes & Noble (Nook), and Sony (Daily Edition), with a few others.

They seem pretty cool, but to me they seem limited and it’s another gadget to have to carry around with me.  Also, I am not going to read a book on my Droid2, It is barely big enough to read my email.

This brings me to one of my favorite gadgets, the HP Tablet PC (TC1100).  It is a Tablet PC running Windows 7, it has inking capabilities, it can detach from the keyboard to become a slate device with a stylus/pen.  Basically it is my Desktop, Notebook, Netbook, Tablet, Slate, and now e-reader.

I currently use my Tablet PC to read PDF files and it works great in portrait mode (in full page view).  I use the jog dial to advance the pages.  It really works great.  However, I wanted to see if my Tablet would run some of the e-reader applications that seem to be coming out.

I installed the Borders Kobo and Amazon Kindle e-reader applications to see how they would work out on my Tablet PC.  I found an issue right off the bat when I put either application in portrait mode.  The stylus/pen did not work correctly, the orientation got messed up.  The stylus/pen moved the opposite way you move the pen.  I move the stylus up the cursor was at the bottom of the page.  I move the stylus to the left the cursor was on the right.  It was really weird.

The cool part was I went out to TabletPCReview.com posted my problem and one of the members commented back that it was probably the Wacom Driver.  It was weird because I have not had any other problems with any other application in landscape or portrait, so I wasn’t sure what to think.  I have been running the Wacom Penabled Driver v5.08-2a for better of a year on Windows 7 and have not had a problem.  The member recommended using the HP default Wacom driver.

I uninstalled the Wacom Penabled Driver v5.08-2a and restarted.  I then downloaded and installed the HP Wacom Digitizer Driver v1.6.1a (sp24581).

Bada bing!  It resolved the issue with the e-readers.  So far I am enjoying the Tablet running the two e-reader apps, but I haven’t decided which one I like more though.  Still pretty new.

T-SQL Tuesday #13 – I don’t know what I want, but I want it

This month’s TSQL2sDAY is being hosted by Steve Jones (Twitter | Blog). The topic this month is around “what the business says is not what the business wants”.

Have you heard this one before?  I am not sure what I want, but I want it.

I am currently involved in a project where we are upgrading/moving from an old in-house created application to a new in-house created application.  This involves the business analysts working with the other department getting all of their business needs.  Don’t get me wrong you need the input from the people that are going to be using the system or it will fail.  However, if you don’t know what you want, how can we deliver that to you.

I think what I am trying to convey is we do need to interact with the business users to see what they really need and give them those things that will help them do their job, which helps the company, which helps us stay employed.

I am thankful for a strong business analyst group in our department.  They know more about the business process then the actual users do.  They are able to anticipate with the user needs and work with development to give them those features.